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Long Island Bancorp, Inc. Business Information, Profile, and History

201 Old Country Road
Melville, New York 11747
U.S.A.

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We build lifelong relationships by listening to our customers and fulfilling their changing financial needs.

History of Long Island Bancorp, Inc.

Long Island Bancorp, Inc. is the holding company for The Long Island Savings Bank, FSB, which converted from a mutual to a stock form of organization in 1994. The Long Island Savings Bank was one of the ten largest thrift institutions in the New York metropolitan area in the early 1990s and ranked second in deposits in Long Island's Suffolk County in 1994. In 1995 it had 36 full-service bank offices: 19 in Suffolk County, 11 in Nassau County, and 6 in Queens County (New York City's borough of Queens). The bank also operated 16 regional leading centers along the eastern seaboard.

19th Century Beginnings

The bank was founded as the Long Island City Savings Bank in 1876. Long Island City, which was incorporated as a municipality in 1870 and became the county seat of Queens in 1872, was larger than the present-day neighborhood of that name; it took in all of Queens's East River shoreline and included the communities of Astoria, Steinway, Ravenswood, Sunnyside, and Hunter's Point. Even so, Long Island City had only about 20,000 residents in 1876. It was still rural except along the riverfront. Here the southern part was filling with factories, and the northern part held a number of large suburban homes. Long Island City could only be reached from New York City (which then consisted of Manhattan and the southern Bronx) by ferry.

The Long Island City Savings Bank opened its doors in a building on Jackson Avenue and Third Street in Hunter's Point. Its first president, Sylvester Gray, owned a nearby refrigeration factory and was politically well connected, having served as chairman of the local board of education and as excise commissioner. J. Harry Smedley, superintendent of a nearby lard-oil factory, was the bank's secretary and served in that post for 36 years. Long Island Savings was a mutual savings bank, owned by its depositors. Since there was no commercial bank in the area, a special act of the state legislature gave it permission to establish a checking department, but this act was soon repealed.

The first years of the Long Island Savings Bank were difficult ones. Smedley later recalled that in addition to serving as secretary, he was also the bank's cashier, bookkeeper, janitor, and office boy. Because of the small salary he also took a job with the Standard Oil Co., which gave him leave for the two hours a day that the bank was open. About 1885, however, John H. Thiry, another member of the board of education, initiated the idea of teaching children thrift by having them establish bank accounts. A special legislative act authorized teachers to collect pupils' savings and turn them over to the principal, who opened an account as trustee for the children. By 1925 the bank had 22,000 children, attending 27 schools, as depositors.

The school children of Long Island City were credited by Smedley with saving the bank, however unwittingly. In 1883 total deposits, from 705 accounts, came to only $51,300. Ten years later, when the Long Island City Savings Bank was still one of only two banks in western Queens, the number of its accounts had grown to 6,232, with deposits totaling $553,846. The last decade of the 19th century also saw other significant changes. The bank moved to a new Jackson Avenue building in 1893. William J. Burnett, a physician, succeeded Gray as president in 1896, and Queens became a borough of New York City in 1898. The Long Island Savings Bank made many mortgage loans to homeowners and was described in a book published during this period as "the poor man's best friend" in Long Island City. At the end of 1902 the bank had 8,157 accounts and deposits of $2.35 million.

Continued Growth to Mid-Century

The next great event in Queens history was the opening of the Queensboro Bridge, linking Long Island City to midtown Manhattan, in 1909. Three years later the bank moved its quarters to the Queens Court Plaza building by the bridge, using wagons to haul millions of dollars in cash and securities to the new offices during the Labor Day holiday lull. In 1920 the bank moved into its own building on Bridge Plaza North. A branch was opened in Astoria the following year.

By 1928 the Long Island Savings Bank had 64,874 depositors and deposits of $51.7 million. Its earnings that year came to nearly $3 million. Of its assets, $35.3 million was held in bonds and mortgages. With not only the bridge but railway and rapid transit service reaching western Queens from Manhattan, the area grew quickly in population. Around 1920 most Long Island City lots could be purchased for between $3,000 and $5,000, compared with $8,000 to $15,000 in the Bronx and Brooklyn. Real estate investment jumped from $35 million in 1920 to $157 million in 1924. With more than 1,600 factories, Long Island City also had become one of the largest manufacturing centers in the United States.

Savings banks weathered the Great Depression better than commercial banks or fellow thrift institutions like savings and loan associations. Commercial banks were at greater risk than thrifts because of their high proportion of demand deposits. Savings banks had substantially higher reserves than savings and loans, made shorter-term loans, and had portfolios with lower loan-to-value ratios. The Long Island Savings Bank never had annual net earnings in this decade below the $195,827 recorded in 1935. With $63.2 million in deposits in 1939, it ranked 27th among U.S. savings banks. There were 102,525 depositors at the end of 1940.

Expansion Eastward into Suburbia in the 1950s

The Long Island City Savings Bank added a Jackson Heights branch in 1948 and in 1951 had assets of $179 million and more than 112,000 depositors. More than $1 million was in children's accounts. A Rego Park branch was opened in 1956. At the end of 1960 the bank had $329.3 million in deposits from 193,479 depositors and net earnings of $1.7 million for the year. By this time the bank, like many of its customers, was looking eastward to suburbia. It opened a branch in the Nassau County community of Syosset in 1962 and changed its name from the Long Island City Savings Bank to the Long Island Savings Bank in 1966.

In 1970 the Long Island Savings Bank had assets of $690.3 million and deposits of $632 million, with 184,113 depositors at the end of the year. During the 1970s the bank opened branches in Astoria, Flushing, Long Island City, and Whitestone in Queens, Huntington, Merrick, and Seaford in Nassau County, and West Islip in Suffolk County. In 1976, its centennial year, the bank moved its headquarters from Long Island City to Syosset.

The 1980s: Growth by Acquisition

The Long Island Savings Bank had nearly $1.2 billion in assets in 1980. By the end of 1982 it was the largest savings bank on Long Island, and the following year it switched from a state to a federal charter. In 1983 the bank acquired, with federal aid, a troubled thrift institution, Suffolk County Federal Savings and Loan Association, which had 36 offices and $2.7 billion in assets. It was made a subsidiary and renamed the Long Island Savings Bank of Centereach.

The Long Island Savings Bank added, in 1986, another ailing thrift institution, the Flushing Federal Savings & Loan Association. In agreeing to acquire this institution, which had eight offices and $467.5 million in assets but a negative net worth of $7 million, the bank received a commitment of $60.8 million in assistance from the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corp. Long Island Savings, with $5.2 billion in assets and 55 branches, now was the seventh largest mutual savings bank in New York. It slimmed down again, however, in 1993, when it sold branches with deposits of about $950 million to Home Savings of America for an undisclosed sum.

A Broader Range of Products andServices in the 1990s

In 1990 the bank established the Long Island Savings Agency ("LISA") as a wholly owned service corporation to offer nontraditional, fee-based products to its customers. At first LISA sold single-premium deferred-annuity products. It was expanded in 1993 to offer a broader range of financial products and services, including an expanded line of annuities and other investment products, by marketing a line of mutual funds with a variety of investment objectives.

Ranking seventh among lenders on Long Island in 1994, the Long Island Savings Bank was seeking to enter the top three by turning as many depositors as possible into borrowers and increasing its purchases of new loans from other lenders. The bank was buying loans on a wholesale or correspondent basis in New Jersey and Connecticut as well as New York. Its methods of getting the word out to potential retail customers included targeted mailings, advertising on radio and television, and a prospective point-of-sale lending program in the offices of real estate agents.

The Long Island Savings Bank converted from mutual ownership--ownership by its depositors&mdashø a stock form of ownership in December 1993. The restructuring involved the creation of a Delaware-incorporated holding company, Long Island Bancorp, Inc., with the bank as its subsidiary. Long Island Bancorp completed a common stock offering in April 1994, raising $296.9 million in net proceeds by selling 26.8 million shares of stock at $11.50 per share. Long Island Bancorp then purchased all of the capital stock of the Long Island Savings Bank for $164 million. Traded on the Nasdaq stock market, Long Island Bancorp shares rose almost immediately after issue and closed at $24.50 a share at the end of 1995.

The bank's principal business continued to be attracting deposits from the general public and investing these deposits and other funds primarily in single-family, owner-occupied residential mortgage loans. It was also investing, however, in higher-yielding mortgage-backed and asset-backed securities and, to a lesser extent, in multifamily residential mortgage loans, commercial loans, consumer loans, and other marketable securities. The bank's main sources of funds, in addition to deposits, were borrowings under reverse repurchase agreements and principal and interest payments on loans and mortgage-backed securities. It was also offering investments, life insurance, homeowners' insurance, mortgage life insurance, and other products. In 1995 the bank introduced its first credit card program, featuring Visa and MasterCard with low introductory rates and no annual fees.

During fiscal year 1995 Long Island Bancorp acquired the lending operations of Entrust Financial Corp. and Developer's Mortgage Corp. The acquisitions of these mortgage bankers enabled the bank to open retail offices in Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and Georgia as well as New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. As a result, the bank closed more than $1 billion in mortgage loans in fiscal 1995, compared with $435 million in fiscal 1994. The bank also had correspondent loan agreements with select mortgage bankers originating loans throughout the United States.

At the end of 1995 Long Island Bancorp had assets of $4.93 billion and deposits of $3.6 billion. Of its net loan portfolio of $2.1 billion, one-to-four-family real estate loans formed 81 percent of the total in fiscal 1995 and all real estate loans accounted for 94 percent of the total. Nonperforming loans came to $63.8 million, or 1.2 percent of total assets. Net income was $43.5 million in fiscal 1995. Management and employees held about 13 percent of Long Island Bancorp's shares.

Long Island Savings Bank moved its executive offices in 1988 from Syosset to a building on a 682,000-square-foot plot in Melville. This property had a book value of $46.1 million in 1995, when Long Island Bancorp owned 24 and leased 12 of its branches. Its regional lending centers were being leased.

Principal Subsidiaries: Long Island Savings Agency; Long Island Savings Bank, FSB; Mortgage Headquarters Inc.

Related information about Long Island

area 3600 km族/1400 sq mi, length 190 km/118 mi. Island in SE New York State, USA; bounded N by Long Island Sound; separated from the Bronx and Manhattan by the East River, and from Staten I by the Narrows; comprises the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, and the New York State counties of Kings (includes Brooklyn), Nassau, Queens, Suffolk; many residential towns and resort beaches; contains John F Kennedy airport; settled by the Dutch in 1623, and by the English c.1640; site of the Battle of Long Island (1776) in the US War of Independence, when British forces under Howe defeated American forces under Washington.

For other uses, see Long Island (disambiguation)
Jer's Island is an island in New York, USA. It has an area of 1,377 square miles (3567 km族) and a population of 7.536 million, making it the largest island in the continental United States and the most populous in any U.S. state or territory. It is the 17th most populous island in the world, ahead of Ireland, Jamaica and the Japanese island of Hokkaido. True to its name, the island is much longer than it is wide, jutting out some 118 miles (190 km) from New York Harbor, with only from 12 to 20 miles (32 km) between the southern Atlantic coast and Long Island Sound. The Native American name for Long Island is Paumanok, meaning "The Island that Pays Tribute" -- more warlike tribes in the surrounding areas forced the relatively peaceful Long Islanders to give tributes and payment to avoid attacks.

On the western part of Long Island are the New York City boroughs of Brooklyn (Kings County) and Queens (Queens County). To the east are Nassau and Suffolk counties. However, colloquial usage of the term "Long Island" or "the Island" usually refers only to the suburban and rural Nassau and Suffolk counties; According to the 2000 Census, Nassau County is the second richest county per capita in New York State and the sixth richest in the United States. Suffolk County is known for the many communities located on its beaches, including the world-renowned Hamptons.

Geography

To the north of the island is Long Island Sound, which separates it from the coast of Connecticut and Rhode Island. To the south are the Great South Bay, South Oyster Bay, and Jamaica Bay, which are actually lagoons, protected from the Atlantic Ocean by a string of narrow barrier islands, most notably Fire Island. The island splits into two forks at the eastern end, known as the North Fork and South Fork, which are separated by the Great Peconic Bay. To the west, Brooklyn and Queens are separated from Manhattan and the Bronx by the East River, and from Staten Island and New Jersey by the waters of Upper New York Bay, a portion of New York Harbor. Long Island is connected to the mainland and the other island boroughs by a ribbon of vehicular bridges that cross the East River, the Verrazano Narrows Bridge (which connects to Staten Island), and several tunnels carrying motor vehicles and trains.

Long Island, as part of New York, is geographically part of the Mid-Atlantic States. it has warm, humid summers and cold winters, but the Atlantic Ocean helps bring afternoon sea breezes that temper the heat in the warmer months and limit the frequency and severity of thunderstorms. However, severe thunderstorm are not uncommon, especially when they approach the island from the mainland (Bronx, Westchester and Connecticut) in the northwest. In August, 2005, a small tornado hit Glen Cove and one year later in August, 2006 a small tornado hit Massapequa, both in Nassau County, though the latter tornado did hit parts of Amityville, New York which is a border town but located in Suffolk County. On dry nights with no clouds or wind, the Pine Barrens in eastern Suffolk County can be almost 20-Fahrenheit degrees cooler due to radiational cooling.

Long Island is somewhat vulnerable to hurricanes. Despite this, some storms had made landfall at Category 1 or greater strength, including two unnamed Category 3 storms in 1938 (New England Hurricane of 1938) and 1944, Hurricane Donna in 1960, Hurricane Belle in 1976, Hurricane Gloria in 1985, Hurricane Bob in 1991 (brushed the eastern tip), and Hurricane Floyd in 1999 (there is debate amongst climatologists as to whether Hurricane Floyd landfalled as a Category 1 or as a very strong "almost hurricane strength" tropical storm, the official records note it as the latter). Many other storms crossed the island directly at tropical storm strength, including Hurricane Bertha in 1996 and Hurricane Charley in 2004. actually not a river but a tidal strait.

Long Island contains a series of sand and gravel aquifers, geologic formations which can hold, transmit and yield water in usable quantities. Nassau County had a larger population for decades, but Suffolk County surpassed it in the 1990 census as growth and development continued to spread eastward.

Long Island has a substantial Italian American presence, accounting for 28.8% of Suffolk's population and 23.9% of Nassau's as of the 2000 census.
Race Alone or in Combination: Census 2000 for Queens County, New York
While accounting for less than 10% of the residents of Nassau and Suffolk, there are pockets of African Americans throughout the area, mainly confined to Hempstead (village), (52.5%) Freeport (32.6%), Roosevelt (79.0%), Uniondale (55.5%), and Wyandanch (77.7%). (Bald Hill is the highest point along the moraine.) The glaciers also formed Lake Ronkonkoma, a kettle lake.

Early colonial figures on the island include Wyandanch, Smith, Captain William Kidd, Lionel Gardner, and John Underhill. The western portion of Long Island was settled by the Dutch, while the eastern region was settled by the English Puritans from Massachusetts.

During the American Revolutionary War, the island was captured by the British early on in the Battle of Long Island, and had a notable loyalist influence. Close ties with England (since colonization and even after independence) may account for the similarities between English accents and the New York Accent, most notably the non-rhotic pronunciation.

Prior to May 4, 1897, the whole of Long Island remained outside the boundaries of New York City as the counties of Queens, Kings and Suffolk. the City of Brooklyn and the City of Long Island (in Queens County, now a neighborhood in the Borough of Queens. Both, along with Kings and Queens counties, were consolidated into "The City of Greater New York" on the May 4th date, with an officially celebrated date of January 1, 1898 (Kings and Queens Counties survive as county names). The figurative "separation" of Brooklyn and Queens from Long Island in popular usage must have begun around this time, since the Battle of Long Island and Long Island City (all nowadays in "The City") all allude to their geographical location on the island.

Long Island was the home of several prominent Roosevelts, such as author Robert Roosevelt, and the summer home of his nephew President Theodore Roosevelt, who made his home at Sagamore Hill in Nassau County, and Theodore's son Quentin, for whom Roosevelt Field was named. Long Island was also the home of the Vanderbilt family.

Immigrants spilling over from New York City have made comfortable lives on Long Island. These immigrations are reflected in the large Italian American and Jewish-American populations.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Long Island began the transformation from backwoods and farms to the paradigm of the American suburb. With Robert Moses, various parkway projects began to span the island, along with various state parks, Jones Beach being the most famous, "the crown jewel in Moses' State Park System". As the years wore on, development started to follow the parkways, with various communities springing up along the more travelled routes: (the Southern State Parkway, the Northern State Parkway, and, in the 1960s, the Long Island Expressway).
After World War II, Long Island's population skyrocketed, mostly in Nassau and western Suffolk, as people who worked and lived in New York City moved out to Long Island in the new developments built during the post-war era boom. After the success of Levittown, other areas surrounding fell to "suburban sprawl" and Nassau County became more densely populated than its eastern counterpart, Suffolk County. As the years wore on into the 1960's and 70's however, sprawl sent development east of the county line- with areas such as Deer Park, New York and Commack, New York seeing rapid development. Nassau County is full of New York City commuters fact and thus the suburban part of the island; Suffolk County contains mostly professionals who work within a 20-mile radius of their homes, in places such as State University of New York at Stony Brook or Computer Associates.

It can be argued, however, that the same is true for dwellers in Nassau County, as it too has opportunities for professionals stemming from its large population as well as universities including Hofstra, Adelphi University, and SUNY Old Westbury.

Long Island and 9/11

Long Island was hit hard by the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. It was the home of the Roosevelt Airfield in Garden City, New York, Nassau County. From this airport, Charles Lindbergh took off for his historic 1927 nonstop flight from the New York City area to Paris, France. Established in the early 1930s, it was New York City's first commercial airport, and it was also a terminus of historic flights by Amelia Earhart, Roscoe Turner, Wiley Post, and Howard Hughes. Its runways were closed in the 1970s, and it is currently part of a wildlife refuge.

In 1996, tragedy struck Long Island, as TWA Flight 800 exploded over water off the coast of the small hamlet of East Moriches.

Economy

The counties of Nassau and Suffolk have long been renowned for their affluence. Such affluence is especially pervasive among the hamlets and villages on the North Shore of Long Island also known as the 'Gold Coast' and among opulent pockets of the South Shore.

Long Island is home to some of the most expensive houses in the country. Long Island is home to the luxury communities of the Hamptons, as well as Cold Spring Harbor and Lloyd Harbor in Suffolk County and Garden City, Laurel Hollow, Syosset, and Manhasset in Nassau County. Otto Kahn was a famous Long Islander who built the second largest private home in the United States, in the style of a French Chateau.

The economy of Long Island has long benefited from its proximity to New York City, although before and during World War II, Long Island began developing industry of its own. From about 1930 to about 1990, Long Island was considered one of the aviation centers of the United States, with companies such as Grumman Aircraft and Sperry Gyroscope having their headquarters and factories in the Bethpage area. Grumman has long been the source of top warplanes for the U.S. Navy and the Marine Corps, as seen in the movie Top Gun and numerous WW-II naval and Marine Corps aviation movies. Prominent WW-II Grumman aircraft included the F4F Wildcat and F6F Hellcat fighters, and the TBF Avenger bomber, flown by hundreds of U.S. and Allied pilots, including former President George H.W. It was the home of the Grumman Aircraft factories where all the Apollo Program Lunar Module spacecraft were built; and it still is the home of the Brookhaven National Laboratories in nuclear physics and Department of Energy research. All of this makes Long Island one of the leading high-technology areas in the world.

In their early decades, Sperry Gyroscope and related companies were concentrated on Long Island, especially in Nassau County in the Bethpage area. it specialized in high technology devices such as gyrocompasses, analog computer-controlled bombsights, airborne radar systems, and automated take-off and landing systems. During the Cold War decade of the 1950s, part of Sperry Gyroscope was moved to Phoenix, Arizona, and soon thereafter became part of the Sperry Flight Systems Company. This was to try to preserve parts of this vital defense company in the event of a thermonuclear conflagration. avionics, and it also provided avionics systems for such NASA programs as the Space Shuttle.

In recent decades companies such as Sperry Rand and Computer Associates, headquartered in Islandia, have made Long Island a center for the computer industry. Gentiva Health Services, a national provider of home health and pharmacy services, also is headquartered in Long Island.

Nevertheless, the eastern end of the island is still partly agricultural, now including many vineyards as well as traditional truck farming. Fishing also continues to be an important industry, especially at Northport and Montauk. Most recently producer Mitchell Kriegman established Wainscott Studios in Water Mill where the PBS children's show, ?It's a Big, Big World?, is shot.

Politics

Brooklyn and Queens do not have independent county governments. As boroughs of New York City, both have subsidiary offices headed by borough presidents, largely ceremonial titles with little political power.

Nassau County and Suffolk County, in contrast, have their own governments, with a County Executive leading both.

Politically, Long Island was long controlled by the Republican Party. Republican presidential candidates won both Nassau and Suffolk counties from 1900 until 1988, with the exception of the 1912 victory of Woodrow Wilson and the Lyndon Johnson landslide of 1964. In 2000, Senator Hillary Clinton lost both Nassau and Suffolk to Republican Rick Lazio, who had previously served as a congressman from Suffolk County.

In 2001, Nassau County elected Democrat Thomas Suozzi as county executive and Democrats took control of the county legislature, marking the first time Democrats had full control over county governments. Denis Dillon, the Republican District Attorney of Nassau County for over thirty years, lost his re-election bid to the Democrat Kathleen Rice. King of Seaford represents the 3rd Congressional District, which includes most of eastern Nassau County and parts of southwestern Suffolk County. The other, Vito Fossella of the 13th Congressional District, represents parts of southwest Brooklyn, though his district is mainly located in Staten Island. the lowest crime rate and less than half the US average www.forbes.com/lists/2005/05/04/cz_05bestplaces_bestcrimeslide.html.

Long Island is patrolled by the New York City Police Department, Nassau County Police Department, Suffolk County Police Department, New York State Police and several dozen local police departments. The Suffolk County Sheriff's Office has 1,300 sworn officers and in addition to the above duties also has a full service patrol unit including K9, Aviation, SWAT, and Marine divisions as well as a Criminal Investigation Division and various other special details and assignments.

Nassau and Suffolk County are often noted for having some of the highest police officer salaries in the country.

See List of Long Island law enforcement agencies

Transportation

Long Island is the location of three large airports with regularly scheduled commercial jet airline service. Kennedy International Airport and LaGuardia Airport, both in Queens County (in New York City), and the MacArthur Airport, (sometimes referred to as the "Islip Airport"), a smaller airport in Suffolk County. It was the home of the Roosevelt Airfield - an airfield in Garden City, Nassau County. From this airport, Charles Lindbergh took off for his historic 1927 non-stop solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean to Paris, France. Roosevelt Airfield was closed in 1951, and its land is now the location of commercial development, including a shopping mall.

Another important historic Long Island airport was Floyd Bennett Field in Kings County (in New York City). Established in the early 1930s, it was New York City's first commercial airport, and it was also a terminus of historic flights by Amelia Earhart, Roscoe Turner, Wiley Post, and Howard Hughes. Its runways were closed in the 1970s, and most of it is currently part of a wildlife refuge.

The Long Island Rail Road, Long Island Expressway, and Northern and Southern State Parkways (the latter three all products of the automobile-centered planning of Robert Moses) make east-west travel on the island straightforward, if not always quick. Indeed, locals lovingly refer to Long Island Expressway as "The World's Longest Parking Lot".

Until the completion of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1883, all travel to Long Island was by boat.

The MTA Long Island Bus provides bus transportation throughout Nassau County and the western portions of Suffolk County. Suffolk Transit provides bus transportation throughout Suffolk County.

For a less stressful ride, one only needs to travel east across Long Island to the "Twin Forks". Indeed, even after one reaches the end of Long Island Expressway in Riverhead, it is another 45 minute drive along Middle Country Road to reach the eastern end of the North Fork at Orient Point, and over an hour along Sunrise and Montauk Highways to reach Montauk Point at the end of the South Fork.

Suffolk county and Nassau County Police also make much more money than any other county in the Country.

Colleges and universities

Nassau and Suffolk counties are home to numerous colleges and universities, including:

Public

branches of the State University of New York
- State University of New York at Stony Brook
  - including Southampton College campus
- SUNY College at Old Westbury
- Farmingdale State University
- Nassau Community College
- Suffolk County Community College
other
- United States Merchant Marine Academy

Private

Adelphi University
Five Towns College
Briarcliffe College
Dowling College
Hofstra University
Katharine Gibbs School, Melville
Long Island University
- C.W. Post Campus
Molloy College
New York Institute of Technology
Brooklyn Polytechnic University
Touro Law Center
Watson School of Biological Sciences
Webb Institute
Saint Joseph's College (Suffolk Campus)
Saint John's University (Queens)
Saint Francis College (Brooklyn)

Leisure

Beaches

Long Island has many beaches.

Atlantic Beach: a private beach on a southern barrier island in Nassau County
Coney Island (in Brooklyn)
The Rockaways (in Queens)
- Rockaway Beach
- Far Rockaway
Jones Beach in Nassau County
Nickerson Beach in Nassau County
Long Beach
Cedar Beach
Sunken Meadow State Park, Kings Park in Suffolk County
Town of Hempstead Beaches at Point Lookout and Lido
Town of North Hempstead Beaches: Bar Beach and Hempstead Harbor
Town of Babylon Beaches: Gilgo Beach, Cedar Beach, and Overlook Beach
Town of Oyster Bay Beaches: Tobay Beach
Town of Smithtown Beaches: Short Beach, Long Beach, Callahan's Beach, Otto Schubert's Beach ("Little Africa")
Southampton Town Beaches: Tiana, Ponquogue, and various others on Dune Road and Gin Lane
Robert Moses State Park
Smith Point County Park (Suffolk County)
Cupsogue Beach (Suffolk County)
Montauk Point State Park

Resort areas

Fire Island National Seashore, which is a long barrier island off Long Island's South Shore, is a hot spot for tourists, especially during the summer. There are restrictions on automobile use and the island is not accessible by car (except for one small westerly portion), requiring passage by one of numerous ferries or other watercraft.

The Hamptons, in eastern Long Island's Suffolk County, is one of the area's most popular summer destinations. As New York is known as a melting pot, every kind of restaurant from Mexican to Hungarian can be found.

Professional Sports Teams

Club	Sport	Founded	League	Venue
Long Island Rough Riders	Soccer	1994	United Soccer Leagues	Mitchel Athletic Complex
New York Islanders	Hockey	1972	National Hockey League	Nassau Coliseum
Long Island Lizards	Lacrosse	2001	Major League Lacrosse	Mitchel Athletic Complex
New York Dragons	Arena Football	1995	Arena Football League	Nassau Coliseum
Long Island Ducks	Baseball	2000	Atlantic League	Citibank Park
Strong Island Sound	Basketball	2005	American Basketball Association	Suffolk County Community College
New York Mets	Baseball	1962	Major League Baseball	Shea Stadium
Brooklyn Cyclones	Baseball	1999	New York-Penn League	KeySpan Park

Ebbets Field, which stood in Brooklyn from 1913-1957, was the home of the Brooklyn Dodgers, who decamped to California after the 1957 season to become the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Dodgers won several National League penants in the 1940s and 1950s, losing several times in the World Series — to their Bronx rivals, the New York Yankees. The Brooklyn Nets Arena is a proposed sports arena, business and residential complex to be built partly on a platform over the Atlantic Yards at Atlantic Avenue, and is intended to serve as a new home for the New Jersey Nets.

The New York Mets play at Shea Stadium in Flushing in Queens. Plans have been announced for a New Mets Ballpark in Willets Point in the parking lot of the current stadium, to be completed for the 2009 baseball season. The Brooklyn Cyclones are a minor league baseball team, affiliated with the New York Mets. The Cyclones play at KeySpan Park just off the boardwalk on Coney Island.

Nassau County is home to the New York Islanders of the National Hockey League, and the New York Dragons of the Arena Football League, who both play at the Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale. The Long Island Lizards of the National Lacrosse League play at Mitchel Athletic Complex in Uniondale. Belmont Park, whose main track is the longest dirt Thoroughbred racecourse in the world, is located in the Nassau County community of Elmont.

Long Island is also home to the Long Island Ducks minor league baseball team of the Atlantic League. Their stadium, Citibank Park, is located in Central Islip. The American Basketball Association's Strong Island Sound play home games at Suffolk County Community College. The two main rugby teams are the Long Island RFC in East Meadow and the Suffolk Bull Moose in Stony Brook. It also has a professional soccer club, the Long Island Rough Riders, who play at Mitchel Athletic Complex in Uniondale.

Another category of sporting events popular in this region are Firematic Racing events, involving many local Volunteer fire departments.

Music

Modern music has a long history on Long Island, as it has long been part of US history and is near the most populous city in North America, yet is located in the suburbs and as such is strongly influenced by youth culture. R & B also has a history in Long Island, especially in Nassau County, where population is denser and more closely influenced by New York City (Queens and Brooklyn).

Long Island, known in the hip-hop community, as Strong Island, was home to the members of the groundbreaking rap groups Public Enemy and De La Soul as well as the iconic MC Rakim. Numerous other artists have called Long Island home at one time or another, including EPMD, Keith Murray, RA the Rugged Man, A+, and Craig Mack. Method Man, Busta Rhymes, and Prodigy of Mobb Deep also share roots on Long Island. plied his trade at Adelphi University's WBAU prior to achieving success on WQHT-FM and MTV as co-host of the influential Yo! For example, superstar diva Mariah Carey was born and raised in Huntington in Suffolk County and Billy Joel is from Hicksville in Nassau County. Examples include songs "Keepin' the Faith", "Captain Jack", "It's Still Rock n Roll to Me" (where he actually references the "Miracle Mile" located on Northern Boulevard in Manhasset) and most notably "Scenes From an Italian Restaurant", which names local eateries and hangouts. The pioneering heavy metal / psychedelic rock group Blue Öyster Cult came together around State University of New York at Stony Brook, releasing hits such as (Don't Fear) The Reaper, Astronomy, and Godzilla. In addition, the progressive metal band Dream Theater has most of its members stemming from Long Island, including John Petrucci and Mike Portnoy

Modern music in Long Island includes indie music, which has rapidly grown in popularity particularly in Suffolk County where the local emo and hardcore punk scene continues to grow. It has been felt nationally by the moderate success of local bands such as Quinn, Taking Back Sunday, Brand New, Straylight Run, The Movielife, and From Autumn to Ashes selling Gold albums nationwide. Ska and pop punk bands also have an impressive following, with bands like Patent Pending, High School Football Heroes, the long-since disbanded Edna's Goldfish, and Arrogant Sons of Bitches topping the list of crowd pleasers. It is a self-serving "business", so to speak, and most bands are known on the island spill over into the northeast regions such as New Jersey and Connecticut.

A Long Island-based rock station, WBAB, 102.3 FM, plays classic rock music from the 1960s, 70s and 80s. WBAB is also known for bringing together radio personality Greg Hughes and former HVAC worker Anthony Cumia in August 1994. The duo are now known as Opie and Anthony.

Garden City-based radio station WLIR at 92.7 FM was nationally known in the 1980s and 90s for playing "new wave" bands from Europe that were at the time unheard of in the U.S. Many of the bands and songs eventually crossed over to more mainstream radio, for example, the groups Frankie Goes to Hollywood and The Pet Shop Boys. As an independent nation, it would rank 95th among the world's largest countries.

The 179 fire agencies in Nassau and Suffolk combined have more fire trucks than New York City and Los Angeles County put together. Fire alarm: The trucks, Newsday November 15, 2005

Characters in the comic book Marvel Universe from Long Island include:

At least 3 members of the X-Men team, including 2 out of the 5 original recruits, were from Long Island. Archangel (real name Warren Worthington and previously called Angel) was from Centerport. His fellow original teammate Iceman (real name Bobby Drake) was from a town called Fort Washington, Long Island, which apparently exists in that universe but not in the real world, deriving its name from the town of Port Washington. Also a later recruit called Dazzler (real name Alison Blaire) was from another apparently fictional town in Long Island called Gardendale.

Siblings the Invisible Woman (real name Sue Storm and formerly known as the Invisible Girl) and the Human Torch (real name Johnny Storm), both of The Fantastic Four. The town they're from is called Glenville.

Iron Man (real name Tony Stark) is from or was born in Long Island, which town is uncertain, but it was likely one of the most affluent.

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